searching for home
by acidhu3s
Summary: Eight texts Three the next day to see if she can get her jacket back, only to find that Three has blocked her. The next month, and Three stops showing up to NSS meetings. One month after that, and Three has moved out of her apartment altogether. They do not talk again for a decade. (sequel to 'but what if's change nothing', no smut but implied sexual themes. f/f 24)


Eight isn't sure if she can take it any more.

It's a feeling she's had for a while, but it's one she's bottled up and shoved aside because she holds onto hope. She hopes for a day when Three is all smiles, when Three has life in her, when she's happy and Eight doesn't have to tread around her like she's walking on eggshells.

(To put it bluntly, Eight hopes for a miracle.)

There was a naive part of Eight that thought she could fix Three, because Eight saved the world and everyone on it. There wasn't a reason why she shouldn't be able to save this one inkling, in her eyes.

But Eight knows now that she is one person and it doesn't matter what she's accomplished, because Three has issues that run deeper than what Eight can fix by herself.

Still, Eight tries. Eight tries and she tries and she tries, but ultimately she cannot do this.

So Eight gives up.

It's like it forces a wedge between them that drives them apart. Eight knows Three isn't very social, but she tries her best around Eight. Yet, with this divide, each day seems to be another day in reverse, one that pushes them back to the beginning and then beyond that.

It culminates a week after Valentines.

"Three?" Eight says softly as she walks Three back to her apartment. "Um..."

"Huh?" Three looks up from her phone and over at Eight. "What?"

"I..." Eight knows the words she has to say, but she doesn't know how to say them. She doesn't _want_ to say them. "Um..."

They approach Three's door and Eight lets go of Three's hand for what feels like the last time. Eight craves the warmth already, but prolonging this would be stupid.

"I want to break up," she mumbles, and her voice is so low Eight wonders if Three could hear her in the first place. There is a part of Eight that wants to stay, still, because there are parts of Three that Eight thinks she can say she loves, but there is so much bad and so much that Eight can't deal with. Eight wants to fix her and she wants to make Three happy, to make her better, but Eight cannot heal Three, no matter how hard she tries. Three is too fragile and too broken and it's simply too much for Eight to handle.

"I'm sorry," Eight adds, and she means every word.

Three does not reply for a few seconds.

Maybe there is a part of her that thinks this is an awful dream, a nightmare of the worst kinds. Maybe this is the drop of water that breaks the dam. Maybe Eight should stay, but the words are said and Eight cannot take them back. The instinct to console Three is there immediately, but Eight suppresses it and she catches something like resignation flash in Three's eyes.

"Go," she says. Her voice is flat and dull and barely above a whisper. It's dead and robotic and devoid of everything and it makes Eight scared.

"I-" Eight opens her mouth to apologize again or to just say something, anything, but Three cuts her off.

"Save it and go," Three demands. The stare she gives Eight is sharp and piercing and full of hatred and it almost makes Eight want to cry. Eight turns around and hastily walks down the corridor, but she feels Three's gaze lingering on her.

Eventually, Eight hears Three unlock the door to her apartment and she closes it too calmly. She can't help but stop and stare afterwards, because Eight pictured this going a million ways but never like this.

Yet the end result is the same, so maybe it doesn't matter at all.

Eight forces herself to walk again, and the more time she spends in this hallway alone the more the pit of dread in her stomach grows. She fishes her phone from her pocket and calls Pearl, pressing it up to her ear.

_"Hey, Eight, you alright?"_ she answers. _"You said you needed me to pick you up at 7:00, right? It's early, what happened?"_

"... We broke up," Eight mumbles and now that she says it, it feels so much more real. "Can I... Tell you about it later? I'm... Still trying to process it, I think."

_"She broke up with you?"_

"No," Eight admits and Pearl quietly goes_"Oh__"_ on the other end. "It... Can we not talk about it now?"

_"... Sure,"_ Pearl agrees. _"I'll be there in twenty, okay? And... I'm sorry, Eight."_

"Okay," Eight mumbles and hangs up. She mashes the 'down' button on the elevator and the doors slide open.

The elevator is empty and Eight feels truly alone.

_It's for the best,_ she tells herself.

(If she says it enough times, maybe she'll believe it.)

* * *

Eight texts Three the next day to see if she can get her jacket back, only to find that Three has blocked her.

The next month, and Three stops showing up to NSS meetings.

One month after that, and Three has moved out of her apartment altogether.

(They do not talk again for a decade.)

* * *

Over the years, Three remains a lingering presence in Eight's life. She sees her on TV sometimes, because the treaties and documents she wasted her youth on have finally come to fruition. Atramentos and Octaria finally merge to form the Cephalonian Union, and the capital cities (Inkopolis and Cephalon HQ, which Cephalon being built a few miles beneath it) merged to form Cephalopolis. Eight never thought something like this would ever happen so soon, but perhaps Three found a way.

(The details, too, don't matter - what's done is done.)

Three does not go by Three any longer, because she is so far up in the ranks of the NSS that a number doesn't suit her. By now, she outranks Callie and Marie and the Captain, too, but she never stops being Three to Eight. She has a name, a real name, one that is not Three in every sense of the word, but to the octolings that remember that heavenly melody and the concert that changed it all, she is the Liberator.

She set them free, so it is fitting that she gets a name to match. There is an unspoken holiness to the word, to the title, as if she is above an inkling and is a god that walks among them instead.

(There is a part of Eight that finds that funny, because as she skims through the Liberator's Wikipedia page, she cannot stop herself from remembering a scared seventeen year-old struggling to make a can of chicken noodle soup.)

There are parts of her that are shocked to see Three made it this far, to the far-off age of twenty-seven, because Eight didn't see Three living past eighteen when she first met her. Still, it's not like it matters - these days, Three plays about as much of a role in Eight's life as Kamabo does, which is another way to say that she doesn't.

Kamabo does not have much of a presence at all anymore, with the Deepsea Metro turned into a bridge between Octaria and Atramentos. Yet Eight still remembers riding it eleven years ago at sixteen, meeting Pearl and Marina and the Captain (and Three) while completing every test. Months and years of therapy let her ride it to and fro now, but she avoids it if she can and still reminds herself that Kamabo is gone entirely when she rides.

Still, Eight visits the Captain when she can, but she is busy with work almost all the time. It was once weekly, then monthly, and now it's so infrequent that putting a set time difference between visits would be near impossible. The Cuttlefish Cabin is truly just a cabin these days, no longer a base of operations. Sometimes when Eight stops by, Octavio is there, and Eight must admit she has grown fond of the man over the last ten years. When he is there, he asks Eight to make a special tea native to Octaria, because he longs to drink it more often but his joints are sore and his hands are shaky, and things are so much harder when you're one-hundred and forty. Eight knows the Captain prefers the cheaper Makomart brands, but he insists on drinking the more expensive ones because Octavio wouldn't be able to drink all of it by himself. When Eight suggests tea bags to the two, Octavio laughs and the Captain says that that isn't any way to drink it.

The Captain is something like a grandfather to her, so of course his death hits hard. He lives to one-hundred and forty and dies two days before his birthday. Eight takes three days off to grieve but the company insists she takes the rest of the month off, so she does.

The days leading up to his funeral are a dreary, painful blur filled with condolences Eight can't use and pity-filled stares she doesn't want.

"It's fine," she mumbles, "I'm fine. I've been through worse." Eight knows her smile doesn't reach her eyes, but she tries to fake it nonetheless.

There is a part of Eight that is surprised when she sees Three there next to Callie and Marie and Octavio, but she knows Three was close to him, too. She visited even less than Eight did, but Three was always caught up in politics and treaties and conferences and Eight knows deep down Three tried her best.

They don't speak to each other and Eight isn't even sure Three recognizes her.

(If Three did, would it matter? There are more pressing issues at hand.)

Eight still has two weeks off and she still doesn't know what to do with herself. She spends time with Pearl and Marina but Eight hates the looks they give her, all sad and filled with pity. She briefly reconnects with Four, who knows what's going on but they've barely talked in three years and Eight finds the interaction to feel forced.

She forces herself to get out of bed and she forces herself to shower even though she doesn't want to, and Eight is walking down the Cephalopolis Central streets when she bumps into a stranger.

"Sorry," she mumbles, brushing her arm off. Eight finds herself getting more and more lost in her thoughts with each passing day and she knows she should find a hobby but it's all just _hard_.

"Watch where you're fucking going," comes the stranger's snarl of a reply, and then their eyes meet and Eight didn't want to run into Three right now of all times.

"I_ said _sorry," Eight snaps, because too much is going on right now and Eight doesn't think Three has much of an excuse to be a dick right now, either. Eight's hit hard by his death, too, but she tries her best to be civil. "Is your shirt ruined because I brushed your arm?"

"Oh, go fuck yourself," she spits, and the fury burning in her eyes makes Eight wonder if she remembers. "Do you have any idea what I'm fucking going through?"

"Just shut up," Eight hisses because how _dare_ she, "Shut up. What, you think you're the only one his death affected?"

Three looks as if she's going to say something before recognition flashes in her eyes. Beneath her breath, she mutters, "Unbelievable."

"I don't understand why you're being such an asshole," Eight snaps. The words tumble from her lips before she can stop herself. "I fucking bumped into you. You think you're the only one with problems?"

"Go," Three mutters as she turns away. Her voice is low and angry, barely a whisper. "Just fucking go. I don't want to deal with you right now."

"Likewise," Eight spits back as if the word is poison, and she goes home with her day utterly ruined.


End file.
